


A Shadow in the Bright

by eirabach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Enchanted Forest AU, Explicit Consent, Friends to Lovers, Gift Fic, M/M, Never Have I Ever, Romantic Captain Charming, Sex Pollen, Smut, a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 01:30:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12158838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: David Nolan is a shepherd. A part-time barkeep. An upstanding member of society.He doesn't consort with pirates.Much.





	A Shadow in the Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PhiraLovesLoki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhiraLovesLoki/gifts).



> A birthday gift for the incomparable phiralovesloki. Hope you enjoy, love!
> 
> Much love and gratitude to katie-dub, inaccessible rail (strangetales) and dassala for the beta <3

The tavern is over warm tonight, the blast of the open fire mixing uncomfortably with the mass of bodies who’ve dragged themselves in from the cold, their discarded furs and capes and leathers draped over the backs of chairs and gently steaming in the heat.

David runs a cloth over his forehead to banish the sweat that’s gathered there before hoisting another barrel into position on the bar top.  He jams in the tap with practiced hands and hands off the first foamy tankard to a scrawny looking man with black teeth and beggar-dog eyes.

“On the house,” he mutters as the man scrabbles about his person for a coin purse David knows perfectly well doesn’t exist. “It’s cold out.”

The man babbles something that’s probably gratitude, but David’s not entirely paying attention. His eyes are fixed on one corner of the tavern where the heat haze swims across his vision and he tells himself he should tamp the fire.

(It probably, maybe, doesn’t have anything to do with the fire at all.)

It’s been six weeks since he brought the sheep down from the hills and tucked them up safely for the winter in his mother’s barn. It’s been a good year, _it has_ , not like the last when the frosts came late and the lambs came early. This year he’s enough coin to keep the farm afloat and his belly full until the new season. This year he doesn’t need to work the winter away in a tavern where the walls sweat and the roof leaks.

(But there’s a burst of laughter from the corner, the sound of tankard against tabletop and the first notes of a song, and maybe, secretly, he does.)

_There’s more to life than coin_ , his mother had told him, her wizened hand soft at his cheek. _Don’t forget, David._

 He hasn’t forgotten, he just isn’t sure this is what she had in mind.

The first time he’d seen them - seen _him_ \- had been one of his very first evenings at the taps. It had been bitter that night too, and the slam of the tavern door had sent him spinning, scowling, a retort on the tip of his tongue to _Shut that door behind you, were you raised by wolves?_ And then he’d seen the glint of steel, the swish of leather, eyes bluer and shrewder and older than he’d ever seen before. He’d snapped his jaw closed so hard, so swiftly, that he could have sworn it was audible. There’d been a beat, perhaps two, and then those blue, blue eyes and leather had swaggered up to him, leant in a little too close and asked:

_We’re just after a drink, not a problem, is it?_

_No,_ David had said, arms crossed, fists clenched tight. _Just pay your dues_.

Leather and blue had smiled - smirked, really - an uptick at the corner of lips pinker and plusher than David had cared to dwell on.

_Oh, I always do_.

He always does.

He calls himself Captain Hook, brandishing his namesake he bears in the place of his left hand under the nose of any who try to start trouble, but David knows him as Jones. He knows him to be honourable enough to pay his bills; gentle enough that the girls vie for a place on his knee, starry-eyed as he tells tall tales of lands David hardly believes enough to scoff at; and terrifying enough to keep his crew close and cowed under the threat of the steel.

David knows him to be a friend, of sorts, in a world and a season that feels increasingly friendless.

Then the heat haze clears and David sees the line of his throat, his head thrown back in laughter, the wrinkling of his silk vest at the urgent press of the girl in his lap, the firelight against the curve of his hook.

And David knows hardly anything at all.

He certainly hadn’t known what to think the first time he’d felt it - that sick rush of jealousy that flowed heavy and hot and settled in his stomach like some nauseating rock - only that it half knocked him off his feet. His hands were full of tankards that slopped mead over his shoes as he stopped dead before the table where Jones, where _Hook_ , had buried his face in the crook of a wench’s shoulder. Her skirts were rucked up and her stockings a wrinkled mess that had David turning puce on the spot.

When he finally came up for air Jones had taken his red face, his silent staring, for anger. He had kissed the girl on both cheeks and sent her on her way with a whispered, _Later, love_. _Later._

(David had memorised that sound, the whisper of it following him through sultry summer nights on the hills when the sky was too big and the world was too lonely.)

When David had dropped the tankards half empty to the table, Jones had laughed through kiss swollen lips and said _I never took you for a prude, Dave!_ His crew had laughed too as Jones slapped him on the back and promised to find him the finest wench, _just say the word, Dave, and they’re yours_.

Even then the only word on the tip of David’s tongue had been _You_. Even then when he’d barely known what that might mean. When Jones had still been a pirate and he’d still been… well. David’s never been the changeable sort. Steady. Certain. Handsome enough to win the eye of a lady or three - if not rich enough to win their hand.

Not the sort to consort with pirates, and certainly not in the way he wants to consort with Jones.

(A sticky night in a shepherd’s hut a thousand miles from anyone to hear him, but when _Jones_ fell from parched, parted lips, it was the shock that made him shudder.

And David doesn’t know anything, except that he shouldn’t.

Except that he does.)

Tonight the fire burns long into the night, the howling wind keeping people within the safety of the tavern for as long as their purses allow. But eventually David’s patience runs low and as the drink slows to a trickle, so do the patrons. Until in the end it’s just Jones and his crew that remain ensconced at their corner table, Jones’s arms flung over the back of the bench as he watches David mop slop from tables, his face relaxed and young-looking, his grin a little looser from the rum.

“Aren’t you bored?” he calls, “It’s late.”

“And I’m working,” huffs Dave as he wrings out another cloth into the bucket at his feet. “Which is not something I expect you to know much about.”

He expects a guffaw, or maybe even a sneer depending on how much rum Jones has consumed over the course of the evening, but instead he gets a long, serious sort of look, Jones’s hook tapping lightly on the table as though he’s considering David’s words.

“In the eye of the beholder that, mate,” he says eventually. “Like beauty.”

The last word rolls through his mouth and trips off his tongue, honeyed and a little lower than the rest. David clenches his fist around his damp cloth and wills himself not to blush.

(The corner of Jones’s mouth ticks up, and he thinks he’s probably failed.)

“Come sit,” says Jones, gesturing with his arm at the space beside him. “It’s been a long voyage and we’ve few friends to regale with adventures.”

“Probably because you’ve robbed them all,” David grouses, but he slips into the warm space beside Jones nonetheless, managing to hold himself upright as Jones gives him a hearty slap on the shoulder.

“Lucky for you I’ve no use for a flock, eh?” he says brightly. “Now Smee, here…”

There’s a snort of laughter around the table as Smee, a small, portly little man with an oversized red hat and sharp, rat-like eyes, scowls at his captain.

“You said you wouldn’t bring that up.”

“Excuse me?” David says, wrinkling his nose. “Actually, on second thoughts, don’t. I don’t want to know.”

“Can’t say any of us did,” says Jones with a grin before taking a swing from his flask. “Smee just got a little caught out in one of our games, and we’ve all had to suffer the consequences.”

He knows he’ll regret asking the moment he opens his mouth, but Jones is smiling at him and the room is warm and he doesn’t want to be anywhere but here, not really. Not even if it’s only to listen the timbre of Jones’s voice and feel the vibration of him in the air between them.

“What games?”

–

Jones’s eyes are bright as he talks, his cheeks flushed pink as he gestures at the other men. Their laughter is muted and dull to David’s ears compared to the sound of Jones’s voice.

“And that’s when Mullins there discovered she was _really_ out of the pleasure dens, and he with not a coin left to pay her!”

Mullins winces at the memory, but shrugs it off after a long draw from his tankard.

“Paid her off in other ways though didn’t I,” he says, slightly smug. “Got you all in on the next night’s game too as I recall.”

“And very grateful we were, aye lads?” Jones says with a grin, lifting his flask in salute. “To the pleasure dens!”

“The pleasure dens!” cry the crew, voices petering out to hiccoughs and sighs as the drink settles in their bones.

David swallows, fingers inching towards his cloth again at the thought of Jones in some den of iniquity, his silk vest undone, his eyes dark with lust as someone - some woman - worked her body over his.

He shudders, and Jones notices, one brow quirking up.

“Alright there, Dave?”

“Pleasure dens?” David says, jealousy colouring his tone with disapproval.  “Sounds sordid.”

“Not these,” Jones says, shaking his head. “I’ve seen my share of brothels, but this place…”

“It’s the games,” says Hill, a scrawny, youngish lad, who lean over the table and winks conspiratorially at David. “Make all the difference, see?”

“So you’ve said,” David mutters. “Care to expand?”

Jones pauses his drinking for a moment, his grin changing into something a little more challenging as he considers David.

“Alright. Hill, go fetch Dave a drink.”

“I’m working,” Dave mutters, but Jones shakes his head.

“Not right now you aren’t, now -” he pushes the tankard Hill has brought to the table closer to David with the curve of his hook. “The rules.”

“You play by rules?”

“I do in these sorts of games, Dave. Good form and all that.”

He taps the side of the tankard encouragingly, and David takes a sip.

“Alright,” he continues. “The game goes as follows. Each participant shares something… unaccomplished, shall we say. And then they’re helped to…,” Jones pauses, and David could swear his eyes flick to David’s lips. “accomplish them.”

“Virginal types like Hill here have a hell of a list,” guffaws Mullins. “And as for Mr Smee…”

Smee scowls, his hand falling to the cutlass at his side before Jones slaps his hand down on the table.

“Now if you’re playing the game, and you fancy a little of that yourself, you simply take a drink,” Jones demonstrates with a wink. “And one of the lovelies will be sure to oblige you. Fancy a game?”

“There aren’t any girls here,” David says without thinking.

“None at sea, either mate,” says Jones, dropping his voice conspiratorially, “but I won’t tell if you don’t.”

-

It’s, well, _fun_ , at first, though there’s an undercurrent of something that David dare not name that fizzles beneath every one of Jones’s words and sparks when his shoulder brushes David’s. For his own part David is careful to time sips of his drink so as not to accidentally expose himself as having the same fetish for toes as Mullins or as being as nervous as Hill.

“I have never been kissed”, the boy says, half choking on his mead as he guzzles it and hides his red face behind the tankard.

“Come here then” _,_ laughs Jones, “we can’t have that, can we?”

David takes his own gulp quickly in the space between Hill’s gibbering refusal and the crew’s laughter, and pretends he doesn’t feel Jones’s gaze on the side of his face.

“Interested, Dave?”

“No,” he says, a little too soon, a little too sharply. “Just thirsty.”

Jones hums, a low sound that David feels in the base of his spine, and takes a drag from his own flask.

“I know how you feel.”

Drink sees the crew off in the end. Drink, and their own desires stoked up by a game of one upmanship and off to be slaked in the beds of whichever wench is fortunate to have a space in her schedule. Eventually it’s just David, Smee and Jones sitting in the corner, little more than shadows in the flickering of the dying fire.

Silence falls between them, thick like a woollen blanket. David knows he should get up - the floors won’t mop themselves and the taps need sealing - but he finds himself unable to move from the bench seat at Jones’s side, his breathing a little quicker, a little shallower, as it synchronises with Jones’s own.

Jones doesn’t move either, just taps the edge of his hook on the tabletop and watches Smee drain the dregs of his drink.

“Time to be off then,”  Smee says, smacking his lips together and pushing back from the table. “You coming, Captain?”

“Not tonight,” Jones says, and there’s something odd in his voice, something a little like nerves. “I’ve business to attend to here.”

Smee’s nose wrinkles in confusion.

“Here?”

_Here?_

“What I said, wasn’t it? Be off with you, and I’d better not find any fleeced stowaways on my ship.”

“That was a _joke_ ,” Smee sniffs.

“So you say,” says Jones, and waves his hand toward the door. “Be off with you.”

Smee nods, first to his Captain and then to David who can only incline his head minutely in reply. It’s as though he’s frozen to the spot, his heartbeat thundering in his ears as Smee takes his leave.

The door slams behind Smee, a gust of icy air left in his wake, but it isn’t that that sends the shiver down David’s spine. From the corner of his eye he can see Jones’s long fingers playing over the rim of his flask, his eyes a little darker than normal as he turns to straddle the bench leaving David sitting, sraightbacked and statue-like, between his thighs.

“Well,” Jones says. “This is cosy.”

“You should go,” David says, “I need to close up.”

But he makes no attempt to move, and Jones only taps his fingers against his flask a little harder.

“If you want me to leave,” Jones says, “I shall. On the condition I can ask one thing.”

David makes a sort of low squeaking sound that Jones interprets as permission to continue, leaning in until his mouth is barely an inch from David’s ear. His leather pants creak as he shifts his weight closer, his words more of a breath than a whisper.

“Will you let me show you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” David lies.

Jones sighs, shaking his head slightly as he drop his flask to the table.

“Do you think poorly of men like me, David?”

David lifts his eyebrows, shooting Jones a curious look from the corner of his eye.

“Pirates?”

“That much you made clear last winter, Dave,” Jones says wryly. “All that disapproval has aged you, you know.”

“Is that how you impress your women?” David scoffs.

Jones shrugs then says, “not trying to impress a woman, am I? So I’ll ask again - what do you think of men like me?”

David’s throat works as he swallows heavily. It sounds like a dream come true, this man, this ridiculous intoxicating man, pressing his thigh into David’s back and asking - and asking what, exactly? Paranoia makes his heart race, his palms sweat.

(He thinks it’s paranoia.)

“I think it’s a long voyage.”

“That it is,” agrees Jones, “and this isn’t the closest port.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” David mumbles, and Jones smiles.

“I think you do,” he says softly, “I think you watch me, David. I catch you doing it, when I’m watching you. I think you want things you don’t know how to ask for - but I know. I know, David.”

He hears Jones’s swallow, feels the bob of his throat in the air between them.

“I have never kissed you, David.”

(A hundred lonely nights he’s wondered what that voice would feel like at his ear, and now he knows. He knows it’ll follow him forever. He isn’t sure he cares.)

His hand moves, fingers curling around the tankard, Jones’s sigh warm against his neck as he drinks then turns. They’re so close that he brushes Jones’s nose with his own, tasting the rum on the other man’s breath as he gathers his courage, and says:

“Please.”

Jones kisses him first, a soft gentle press not unlike those David had shared with the blushing maidens of his youth, and he almost laughs, so different is it from what he’s expecting - whatever he’s expecting.

He’s the one to deepen the kiss, to tilt his head and open his mouth, but it’s Jones’s tongue against his that makes him groan, Jones’s hand that sneaks between them to tug at the collar of David’s shirt. It’s also Jones that pulls away first, lips red from stubble burn and eyes a little hooded with lust.

“That was - ” David manages, but Jones shakes his head.

“Just a start, love, I promise,” and then he smiles. “You can call me Killian, if you like?”

“Killian,” David says, then, surer, “Killian.” And he surges forward to recapture that smile with his own.

–

Jones has maneuvered them up against the bar, David’s back to the wood as the other man kisses a wet, sharp trail down the side of his neck. David’s breath comes in strange, desperate pants that he hardly recognises as Jones lowers himself to his knees.

The hook makes a dull thud on the tavern floor and David swears he feels it reverberate up his spine, his nerves singing as he fumbles with the laces of his pants, the bar top sharp at the ridge of his spine.

Hook, Jones, _Killian_ , looks up at him through long dark lashes, his teeth white against the red of his lip as he bites down.

“You don’t have to,” Killian says again. “We don’t have to.”

A furrow forms between his brows, and his body seems to straighten, tighten, as if he’s preparing to stand up, and David’s throat is too dry, nervous desire setting him too on edge. He’s going to lose this, he knows it, he’s going to lose it and he finally finally _knows_.

“No,” he manages. “No. I want to - I want you -”

And then Killian’s hand is on his, warm and a little damp as he helps steady twitching fingers and works the knots from David’s laces, and then -

A warm breath of air against touch starved skin, an intake of breath, those blue, blue eyes that focus on his own, pink lips that part, the slip of a tongue -

And he is undone.

He almost falls to his knees at the first sweep of tongue, his thighs trembling uncontrollably as Killian takes him deep, deep, deeper than David had even thought possible, until only the press of Killian’s fingers into the skin of his hip and the wood at his back keep him upright. His whole body shudders as Killian pulls back only to press his tongue into the ridge that makes David cry out, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on the bar top behind him before giving up to wind themselves in Killian’s hair.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, but he feels the way Killian’s mouth curls into a smile around him. “I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Killian pulls back further, the air so much cooler than the warmth of his mouth that David gasps in shock. Killian makes no move back towards his twitching cock, though, instead looking up at him, his hair mussed from David’s fingers, his lips slightly swollen.

“You never - none of your girls? Truly?”

His voice is different too, rougher, but with less of the captain in it. Less of the captain and more of something David recognises all too well.

Longing. It sounds like longing.

David shakes his head.

“They never - I never- I never wanted…”

He lets the words sit for a moment, wills Killian to understand the ones he can’t quite say.

_Until you_.

_Except you_.

Killian smiles and it’s like the sun coming up over the mountainside, a breathtaking sight that has David sagging back against the bar again, his knees far weaker than they had been even under the careful ministrations of the other man’s tongue.

“You want now,” Killian says, and it isn’t a question.

But David tightens his grip in his hair, and it’s an answer all the same.

–

It’s been a long voyage, a long summer - a long, long life, truth be told - but those are hardly the only reasons he’s never been so keen to make port before.

Aye, the weather has changed for the worse - an ill northerly wind that blows ice water into his eyes each watch - but port is hardly a shelter for men like them. Men like him, with a bounty on his head and not a friend to turn to when it’s called in.

(He never minded that, before. But perhaps he’s getting ahead of himself.)

This winter is different though. There’s a frisson in the wind that doesn’t come from the cold north, but from here, from this nameless, worthless port town. A frisson that comes, in the end, from _him_.

Last winter the tavern at the dockside had meant nothing more than a warm hearth and the prospect of some entertainment for men too long cooped up at sea. Killian hadn’t been looking for anything more than a game of dice and a fresh barrel of rum when he’d first walked in, but then he’d been met with fierce eyes and broad shoulders, distrust and displeasure, and, well, he’d always loved a challenge.

At first it had been a good game, watching David seethe from the bar as Killian and his crew made merry, nights of drinking and whoring only occasionally broken by the clash of steel. But as the weeks had passed David’s shoulders had relaxed, his gaze more contemplative than angry, and Killian had found himself inviting him to join them. For a drink. For a story.

For the flash of a dimple. The curl of a smile. The soft, gentle voice that carries more than any drunken shout when it called _Jones_.

And then it hadn’t really been a game at all.

Killian can’t say that David is the first man to catch his eye - voyages are long and sailors are suspicious after all - and he is _beautiful._ He’s all broad shoulders and strong lines and a jaw that anyone with a _pulse_ would want to bite, but there’s something different about him. Something that calls to a part of Killian he’d thought long lost to Neverland and Crocodiles and love’s last dying breath, the part that’s buried hard under the layers of leather and defended at the point of a hook.

More than desire, though desire him he does, David Nolan makes Captain Hook want to be _better_.

That’s probably why he ran.

(There’s no probably about it.)

When he closes his eyes all he sees is David, flushed red and wide eyed, still half propped against his own bar with his breeches askew. When he swallows he imagines the taste of him thick against his tongue, lies in his bunk and winds his own hand through his hair and pretends, pretends, pretends until he aches with the want of it.

( _Don’t you want..?_ David had asked last night as Killian rose from his knees, his voice a broken sort of whisper.

_Not tonight_ , he’d lied. _That wasn’t the game_.)

It’s a long, long way from a game, and when the men leave for the docks the next night, he doesn’t join them.

Instead he makes his way to the hold where the air is cool and damp and smells of whale oil and the inventory distracts him from the itch in his skin, from the ache in his heart.

“Is this where you’re hiding?”

At first he thinks he’s imagining it - that one kiss, one mouthful, of David Nolan and the man has possessed him - but then he feels the shift in the air as someone enters the room. Hears the creak of the boards beneath another’s feet.

“I thought you were working,” he says without turning, and hears the shrug of a woolen coat in reply.

“I took a night off. Smee seemed keen on covering the taps.”

“You left _Smee_ in charge of your tavern?”

The boards creak again. One step, two.

“Not my tavern. And anyway, I had better things to do.”

Killian hums a noncommittal reply as David’s hand sneaks around him to lift one of the vials from the chest he’s examining.

“What’s this?” he asks, holding it up to the light, and Killian’s eyes widen when he sees which one he’s chosen.

“I wouldn’t - “

“Why not?”

“It’s a delicacy of sorts, one used by those who frequent the pleasure dens.”

David lifts his eyebrows, and Killian feels himself blush.

“And?”

“It… increases your desire. And reduces your recovery time.” He winks, determined not to appear discombobulated in front of David.  “Not everyone is as blessed as me.”

David’s eyes widen momentarily and then he nods, humming slightly as he curls his fingers around the vial.

“About that. You disappeared last night.”

“Were you expecting me to be the cuddling type?”

David tilts his head to one side, considering him through narrowed eyes.

“I expected you to want me to return the favor,” he says.

There’s something in his tone that makes Killian wince and turn his back, concentrating on his inventory so as not to see the look on David’s face.

“I didn’t do it for that,” he admits, the words gritted out. “It wasn’t - it wasn’t for _payment_.”

David barks out a laugh. “Well that’s a relief, at least. So why did you? Proving some sort of point?”

Killian turns to look over his shoulder, but it isn’t disgust he sees on David’s face, but confusion, honest confusion, two high spots of colour in the other man’s cheeks as he meets Killian’s eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he huffs, “who could I possibly have been proving a point to? I’ve been half hanged for less.”

“I’ll bet you have,” David says, and takes a step closer. “Doesn’t explain…” he gestures between the two of them with the hand holding the vial, “this.”

Killian turns around fully, and he swears his heart skips a beat or three as David’s gaze drops to his lips.

“Does it need an explanation?” he asks.

“No,” says David, “I suppose not.”

This kiss is different from the last - rougher, harder, a little more certain in the push and the pull - and it’s Killian who’s backed up against the chests tonight, David’s teeth at his pulse point. Killian who whimpers out a _yes, yes please_ as David pulls at his coat and begs permission with his tongue at the hollow of his throat.

“You’ll tell me?” David pants, “You’ll tell me if I do it wrong?”

And Killian almost laughs at the absurdity of it all, that here they are in the oil drenched bowels of his ship, the man he’s dreamt of all summer sinking to his knees before him whispering words he can’t hear. He pushes Killian’s leathers over his hips and just the flutter of his hand is enough to have him keening like a virgin.

“Just right,” he manages, his thighs trembling as David pulls back his foreskin and tries a first, tentative lick. “Just _perfect_.”

It seems to be all the encouragement David needs to try another, then another, his hand working the base of Killian’s cock as he wraps his lips around the head and writes soliloquies with his tongue. Maybe it’s not the _best_ he’s ever had - far from it, perhaps - but the sight of David’s blond head between his legs, the callouses on his fingers as he pumps and twists, are enough to have Killian on edge in minutes. His panted warnings come just a little too late for David who pulls back only to have his chin and shirt painted white as Killian thrusts into his fist.

“I’m sorry,” Killian mumbles. “I’m sorry.”

David narrows his eyes again and runs his tongue over his lips to catch a drop, the action almost enough to have Killian dropping to his own knees.

“It’s alright,” says David, in that soft, gentle voice that makes Killian ache in an entirely different way. “I can get my own back.”

–

The storm lasts a fortnight, the snow lying thick on the roofs of the village houses and swept overboard hourly by the land locked crew of the Jolly. It’s a rough one. The food stocks are low after a pitiful harvest and the people of this nowhere land know to expect no assistance from the cold hearted rulers of the kingdoms they border. No-one has coin for the tavern.

There’d be no-one there if they did.

David spends his days in the barn attempting to keep his flock alive in much the same way as Killian carefully, almost obsessively, counts out rations to the men of the Jolly, but his nights? His nights he spends warmer than he’s ever been.

He can’t regret this storm, not when it’s brought him these nights. Not when he knows that when the storm leaves, so will the Jolly Roger.

Not when he knows what that means to him, now.

So he’s going to make the most of it while it lasts.

He commits every touch, every smile, every stupid pirate joke to memory. Wills himself to recall precisely how the deck feels under bare feet and the exact shade of puce Smee turned the one time he entered the captain’s quarters without knocking.

(He wraps himself in the lack of judgement, in the silence instead of whispers, in the control Killian exerts with one quirked brow.)

On the fourteenth night, with the storm still raging beyond the windows of the Captain’s cabin, he sits propped up in bed with silk sheets wrapped around his legs, watching the play of candlelight over Killian’s bare skin as he blots the ink on his latest inventory entry and stretches his arms over his head.

“This damn storm had better pass,” Killian groans, rising from the table. “All the spices of the east aren’t enough to make frozen rat a palatable meal.”

He picks up his flask, shakes it, and sighs miserably.

“Not to mention the rum.”

“You drink too much anyway,” says David, parting his legs so that Killian can sit between them. “The drought will be good for you.”

Killian pouts, a ridiculous, mockable thing that he’d never dare show to any other man on the ship, and David rolls his eyes as he presses a finger against the protruding lip.

“I’m only concerned with your health,” he says, and it’s Killian’s turn to roll his eyes, shifting his body weight until he’s able to kneel on the mattress and lean forward to kiss the smile from David’s mouth.

“I can think of a few other things you’re concerned with,” he says, moving to rest his hand on David’s thigh and smirking at the way he shivers as he whispers in his ear. “Want me to demonstrate?”

“Actually,” says David, his heart pounding as he says the words he’s been thinking of for a week or more. “I’ve got an idea.”

–

“Are you sure about this?” Killian holds the vial in his hand, the dark powder glinting within as he presses his thumb against the edge of the cork. “I have seen this used before, but - ”

“A first for both of us then,” says David, his eyes fixed on the vial as he worries at his lip. “Haven’t you been wondering?”

Killian half scoffs. Of course he’s been wondering. He’d seen the ecstasy of the faces of those exposed to the power - watched them writhe and moan and consume one another with no apparent concern other than the pursuit of pleasure. It’s why he’d brought it back, after all. But David is new to this - to the touch of another man’s hand, at least - and he doesn’t want to frighten him, doesn’t want him to look at him differently when the powder wears off, to see Killian in a darker light than that cast by the Jolly’s candles.

He doesn’t especially want to examine why that is, either, but no matter. He already knows.

But then David’s larger hand is over his, and he’s taking the vial, and his eyes are sharp and blue and certain.

“I want to,” he says, each word formed carefully and clearly. “Do you?”

Killian breathes, nods, and the vial pops open.

–

It’s warm, with a soft sort of cinnamon smell that entices and ensnares in equal measure. Killian dips his finger into the vial and lifts it to David’s lips.

“Ready?”

He’s never been so ready for anything in his life.

Just the merest hint of powder against his tongue and it’s like fire is coursing through his veins, his hands burning with the urge to take and grab and possess. It takes only moments to consume them both and send them reeling in the half dark, seemingly unsure of how to quench the fire.

The wind howls and the sheets are a torn, sodden mess on the floor, but none of that matters.

Not when Killian is arching beneath him as David tightens his fingers in his hair and his tongue slips out to lick a trail of fire into the sweat at David’s jaw. David’s blood feels thick, his head so clouded with lust and the heat of Killian’s skin that he’s barely aware of the heave and roll of the ship or the screaming storm outside. The world around him has narrowed to one indiscernible point, all his senses devoted to memorising the scent of sweat, the unsteady catch of breath as he presses his thumb into the hollow of Killian’s throat. Until all he can see, all he ever _wants_ to see, is the desire in Killian’s eyes as he tightens his thighs around David’s waist and sobs out a sound that might be his name.

And the world is spinning, throbbing in time with his cock as Killian flips them over and rears up, grinding his hips down until lights seems to flash red-white in the corners of David’s eyes. And then when David’s biting down on steel to keep from screaming from the sheer desperate ache of it  -  Killian rises up.

Sinks down.

(They say the world explodes in colour, but all he sees is blue.)

–

David wakes first to calm seas and a shaft of winter sunlight that plays along the line of Killian’s spine and reveals the fresh, pink marks scattered amongst the scars. David presses his lips against their own perfect imprint at the curve of Killian’s hip as he sits up, his body aching, and reaches for his breeches.

He knows that last night, somewhere between that first tentative thrust and Killian’s pleas for David to make him his own there’d been a shift, a sudden certainty in their actions, a meaning that hadn’t been there before. The storm between the two of them had reached a crescendo that spilled out in fevered promises and words that David, for one, had never said before, pressed into every scar on Killian’s body and written with tongues on sweat-slicked skin.

But the storm is over. Life resumes.

It was always coming, after all.

Such is the way of things, he supposes, but as he holds his breeches loosely in one hand he finds himself unable to move to put them on.

The hand at his elbow is a little sticky still, but the grip is firm enough.

“Where are you going?” Killian’s voice is rough from lack of sleep and overuse, but David hears the confusion in it. The want. He knows his own is no steadier as he struggles for a reply.

“Back,” he manages. “The storm’s over, Jones. It was…” he takes a deep breath, bites his own cheek, “fun.”

In a single motion Killian is upright, his knees pressed into David’s thigh, and David daren’t turn to look at him because he can feel the heat of his stare, the anger behind it.

“Fun,” Killian says. “Right.”

David half shrugs, the words from last night thick at the back of his throat. He wants to let them out, he does, but how can he now in the bright dawn with the tide already pulling them apart?

(His mother had always told him he was stubborn, but Killian, Killian is worse. Killian will make it worse.

He does.)

“So that’s it? You’re leaving?”

“The farm - “

Killian laughs, a harsh, cold thing worse than any storm.

“The _farm_? Fuck the farm! Come with me.”

David does look at him then, his own mouth curling into a sneer. He says it like it’s nothing. Like David’s whole career - David’s whole _life_ \- isn’t worth considering, and the arrogance of it makes his blood warm, his words less measured.

“As what? Captain’s _pet_?”

Killian jumps back as though he’s been slapped and David cringes at the hot rush of shame that courses through him.

“Is that what you think this is?”

“No,” David says, quickly, too quickly, and he wants to be right. He’s never wanted to be right so much in his life.

This has mattered. He wants it to always have mattered.

“Because it isn’t,” says Killian, and his eyes are like fire and his muscles seem to scream with tension. “It hasn’t ever been - I won’t _make_ you.” He shakes his head, his hair falling in his eyes, and David’s fingers twitch with the urge to brush it aside.

“Nevermind. Go back to your sheep,” Killian says, lying back down. “I’m tired anyway.”

(He has his back to the door when David leaves, and the ship is gone by sundown.)

–

It takes longer than he’d intended. Winter isn’t a prime time for sheep sales, after all, and he’ll need more than the bare minimum in his purse for what he has planned. But eventually he manages to convince someone to take on his flock for almost market rate, and by the first spring tide he’s making the appropriate enquires of every seafaring man who crosses the tavern’s threshold.

Turns out not many men try to _seek out_ pirates (not many pirates are like his), but eventually he hears that their banner has been spotted in the waters of Queen Regina’s kingdom. Although it’s not a place he’s any desire to visit he’s packing up his meagre belongings in moments and praying to a deity he doesn’t believe in that the cost of his travel is no more than the profits from the sale of his farm.

(It’s all of it, every last sovereign, and he’d laugh but all he cares for now is the sea spray on his face and the blue, blue horizon ahead.)

So he hasn’t much when he settles himself into the corner of a dockside tavern. Just a blunted cutlass and enough coppers for a weak mead, the leather of the faintly ridiculous coat he’d brought tight across his shoulders as he watches the door. His foot tapping against the straw covered floor.

If Killian doesn’t want him, what then? David has walked away once, after all. And it’s been months. Months. And -

And the door opens to blue, blue eyes, and leather topped with a smirk like sin, and it doesn’t even matter. Not when he sees the moment Killian realises, the way his jaw drops, oh so slightly, before he swaggers over to take the seat opposite and hides a shaking hand in the sleeve of his coat.

“Saving this seat for anyone?” he asks, as though he doesn’t know, as though he can’t feel the way David longs to reach for that shaking hand and squeeze it with his own.

“Only you,” David replies. “That alright?”

“Aye,” says Killian, the word barely a breath on the exhale. “Alright.”

( _Consider it forgotten_ , Killian promises later that night as David kisses apologies into his hips, and it doesn’t matter about anything, the months of regret and loneliness banished with the brush of lips against lips. Forgiveness in the whisper of forever at the shell of an ear, and nothing nothing nothing matters but the _I love, I love, I love you_ as the tide takes them away.)

–


End file.
